1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electrostatic image developing toner, an electrostatic image developer, a toner cartridge, a process cartridge, an image forming method, and an image forming apparatus.
2. Related Art
In electrophotography, an image is formed by forming an electrostatic image on a photoreceptor in charging and exposure steps, developing an electrostatic latent image with a developer containing a toner, thereby forming a toner image, transferring and fixing the toner image to a recording medium. As the developer in this image formation, a two-component developer composed of a toner and a carrier and a one-component developer using a magnetic toner or a non-magnetic toner singly are usable. As a preparation process of a toner, proposed are a so-called kneading and grinding process in which a thermoplastic resin is melted and kneaded with a pigment, a charge controller, and a releasing agent such as wax, and after cooling, the kneaded mass is finely ground and classified and a toner preparation process utilizing a wet process as a means capable of intentionally controlling the shape or surface structure of a toner. Examples of the wet process include wet spheronization capable of controlling a shape of a toner, suspension granulation capable of controlling its surface composition, and suspension polymerization or aggregation/coalescence capable of controlling its internal composition.
On the other hand, depending on the unevenness of a toner or a recording medium itself, or the density of a toner image, the luster, granularity, or color tone of the resulting image sometimes vary.